The "Scientific Meeting of BNC-b Students" organized by PhD fellows and open to undergraduate, master students and PhD researchers, comes back in 2019! The meeting is aimed to present the work performed by PhD students of the whole Barcelona Nanotechnology Cluster – Bellaterra (ICMAB, ICN2, IMB-CNM, UAB, ALBA), promoting collaborations between them in an academic and scientific environment. The meeting will be held at ICMAB and ICN2 on 6-7 June 2019. Abstracts and registration deadline: 26 April 2019. Will you miss it?

This year, the 17th edition of the "Fira Recerca en Directe", organized by the Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB) in collaboration with Obra Social "la Caixa", will count with the participation of the "Superconducting and Large Scale Nanostructures" group (SUMAN), which will show, among others, the levitating superconducting train. The science fair will take place at CosmoCaixa on 6-9 March 2019.

2019 will be the 150th anniversary since Dmitry Mendeleev discovered the Periodic System and has been proclaimed the "International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements" (IYPT2019) (AITP in Catalan).

The 8th International Conference on Spectroscopic Ellipsometry continues the well-established ICSE series to provide an excellent forum for scientists and engineers working in instrumentation, science and applications of spectroscopic ellipsometry and related techniques.

The second Organic and Molecular Electronics Meeting at ICMAB (ORGI2019) will take place on 8-9 May 2019 at ICMAB. The workshop will bring together groups from ICMAB or nearby Institutions working on different aspects in the field of Molecular Electronics with the main aim of promoting scientific collaborations and synergies among researchers. Deadline for registration and short abstract submission is 8 April 2019.

Register before it's too late! The dramatised reading "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers", which recently received a Grant from FGCSIC, will open the Conference Cycle organized by Alumni UB "Dones de ciència retrobades en la història". The dramatised reading will take place on Monday, 29 April at 6 pm at the "Sala Gabriel Oliver" (Facultat de Filologia, Edifici Històric UB). Entrace is free but registration is needed.

Within the framework of the IV Festival of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology 10alamenos9, the Institutional Delegation of the CSIC in Madrid organizes a new edition of the National Meeting of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Outreach Projects (Encuentro Nacional de Nanodivulgadores), on Friday, 26 April 2019, at the IQFR (Madrid).

The exhibition “Quantica” gives us the keys to understanding the principles of fundamental physics, and it does so through the joint creative work of scientists, educators and artists. The project invites the public to browse freely, to awaken their curiosity, and to critically evaluate the new paradigms of modern science. The inauguration will take place on Tuesday, 9 April 2019 at 7 pm at CCCB, and the exhibition will be open from 10 April to 24 September 2019.

We invite you to the II Workshop on Spectroscopy Techniques: Generalities and Applications, which will be held at ICMAB, Barcelona, on April 1, 2019. If you are working in this field, or are interested in spectroscopy techniques, such as Raman, EPR or NMR, you cannot miss it! We encourage PhD and Master students to attend! Registration is free and deadline is March 15, 2019.

The ICMAB research is present at the 10th International Postgraduate and Continuous Training Forum in Madrid in the CSIC stand (5E01). The forum opens its doors on 28-30 March from 10 am to 8 pm. If you are a student and/or a professional in the education field, here you will find endless options to expand your academic education: masters, doctorates, postgraduate studies, or language schools, in business schools, educational centers, universities, or research centers.

On Wednesday, 19 December 2018, we celebrated Christmas at our Institute. We had a full programme consisting in a Christmas lecture on "Science dissemination 2.0", then the ICMAB choir sang the Christmas songs, and then we had some Christmas finger food for all our staff.

On Friday, 14 December 2018, 25 secondary school students from the "Escola Vedruna Gràcia" visited the ICMAB thanks to the ESCOLAB programme. The students, all from the scientific branch, could enjoy a talk on "Nanomaterials for nanomedicine" by Anna Laromaine, from the NN group, and then visiti some of our Scientific Services.

During two mornings, 12 and 13 November 2018, the ICMAB hosted the workshop for secondary school students "Become a materials detective" (Converteix-te en un detectiu de materials) to celebrate the Science Week 2018. Four classes of 2nd ESO from the IES Vallès (Sabadell) came to ICMAB by train and became scientists for a day.

Arántzazu González, Ramon y Cajal researcher at ICMAB and participant of the program "A Researcher in your classroom" was at two primary schools in November, in the framework of the "Science Week" to show the students what is a scientist and what type of research we do at the ICMAB.

On November 19, Vall d’Hebron held a seminar on Lysosomal Rare Disorders: Focus on Fabry Disease as part of the Rare Diseases Program at the Vall d’Hebron Campus, in collaboration with the European Commission, the Center for Biomedical Research Network on Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN) and the CIBBIM-Nanomedicine at Vall d Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) through the Smart-4-Fabry project, coordinated by Dr. Nora Ventosa, from ICMAB-CSIC and CIBER-BBN.

The ICMAB participated on 9, 10, 11 November 2018 at the 40th edition of Expominer, the exhibition of minerals, fossils and jewelry, organized by Fira Barcelona, with some outreach talks given by five of our researchers, workshops in our stand about superconducting materials, minerals, diffraction and photonic materials, and with the exhibition "Matheroes: Supermaterials, heroes of the future".

The dynamic workshop on "Nanoscience, Nanotechnology, Society and Graphic Design" will explore the use of methodologies of graphic design, such as design thinking, to open up new ways to bring nanoscience and nanotechnology closer to society in an efficient way.

On Tuesday, 6 Nov, and Wednesday, 7 Nov 2018, #CienciaenelParlamento will take place at the "Congreso de los Diputados" in Madrid. More than 100 scientists and 100 politicians will meet to debate how scientific knowledge can help the legislative power in making the laws.

On Tuesday, 29 January 2019, the Welcome Day for the COFUND MSCA Doctoral Training Programme on Functional Advanced Materials "DOC-FAM" PhD Fellows will take place at ICMAB. The Welcome Day is aimed to present the project and introduce the first call PhD fellows and their projects. In this first call, the projects are being carried out at ICMAB-CSIC, ALBA Synchrotron and IREC.

On Wednesday, 12 June 2019, a new session on the "Quantum" exhibition at the CCCB. A session in which the lines of research of the ALBA Synchrotron that use quantum principles, and two experiments carried out, are presented as an example of the possibilities it has in this field. With Salvador Ferrer (ALBA), Gervasi Herranz (ICMAB), and Jordi Fraxedas (ICN2).

We announce the forthcoming 2019 E-MRS Spring Meeting and Exhibit, that will be held in Nice, France (Congress & Exhibition Centre Acropolis) from 27-31 May 2019. Alexander Ponrouch and Florencio Sánchez, ICMAB researchers, participate in the organization of some symposia in the fields of "materials for energy" and "nano-functional materials":

The next "Dilluns de Ciència" conference cycle will be in commemoration of the 150 years of the Periodic Table of the Elements. The talks will take place between April and June 2019 at the CSIC "Residència d'Investigadors", Mondays at 6:30 pm. On 27 May 2019, Gerard Tobias, ICMAB researcher, will talk about "Carbon: from the origin of life to nanoscience".

During three days, between 20-22 May, the Pint of Science Festival, which brings science to bars and pubs, will take place in many cities of Spain. Sant Cugat del Vallès will, for the first time, host this festival! The "Cal Temerari" bar will be full of science for three days!

On Wednesday 10 April 2019, the ICMAB will be at the XIV Business Forum "Fira d'Empreses" organized by the Faculty of Physics and the Faculty of Chemistry, with the participation of three more faculties, Mathematics and Computer Science, Earth Sciences and Biology. If you are a student or a researcher and would like to do an internship with us or work with us, come and visit us and we will inform you, from 10 am from 5 pm.

The VII Spanish Worm Meeting (SWM) will take place in Castelldefels (Barcelona), on March 28-29, 2019. Anna Laromaine, from the ICMAB-CSIC, is one of the organizers of this year's meeting.

This meeting is a biennial gathering of the scientific community working with C. elegans, with special focus on laboratories located in Spain or Spanish scientists working abroad. Deadline for abstracts submission is February 19, 2019.

The next conference cycle "Dilluns de Ciència" is about crystals and life. Two of the five conferences of the cycle will be given by two ICMAB researchers, Dra. Núria Aliaga (ICREA Reserach Professor) and Dr. Gerard Tobias (Tenured Scientist at ICMAB). All the talks will be at the "Residència d'Investigadors" at 6:30 pm, and will take place always on a Monday. The first talk is on January, 21, and the last one will be on April, 29, 2019.

The Phosphorus, Boron and Silicon (PBSi) Conference, held in Barcelona on 10-12 December 2018, counted with the participation of 150 scientists, and was chaired by Prof. Clara Viñas, from ICMAB-CSIC, and Prof. Evamarie Hey-Hawkings from Universität Leipzig. According to the participants, the conference was a great success!

Within the programme "A researcher in your classroom" (Un investigador a la teva aula), researchers from the ICMAB can spend a class at one secondary or primary school and show the students what it is like to be a scientist and the research in nanomaterials performed at our Institute.

This year, to celebrate Christmas, on Wednesday, December 19 2018 at 12 pm, we will have with us Xavier Lasauca, R+D Knowledge and Information Systems Manager at the DGR (Secretary of Universities and Research, Department of Business and Knowledge of the Catalan Government). Xavier will give a Christmas Lecture entitled "Science Dissemination 2.0: Social Media for Researchers", in which he will summarise the benefits which can be gained from the use of social media to support research activities.

After the seminar, there will be the traditional Christmas Concert by the ICMAB choir and the Christmas Buffet for all our staff.

On Tuesday, 27 November 2018, we had a very special visit in our Institute: "the scientists" class formed by 24 six-year old students from "La Trama" school in Sabadell visited us. It was a fantastic visit. All the kids were very happy to become real scientists for a day, and to visit the laboratories, the clean room, the glove boxes, the microscopes and even to perform an X-ray diffraction experiment to discover what is sand made of.

On Thursday 25 October, the students from 2n BTX from the "Col·legi Maristes de Montserrat" (Lleida) took the bus and came to our center to spend an afternoon learning about nanotechnology and supermaterials! They could enjoy the visit of the "Matheroes" exhibition, a talk from one of our researchers, and a visit to our installations.

On 26 October 2018, Anna Laromaine participated in the project "Ciencia y Tecnología en femenino", organized by the Asociación de Parques Científicos y Tecnológicos de España (APTE) and with the support of Bayer, which took place at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB). The project consisted of a whole morning of science talks, workshops and a visit to the exhibition "Women that changed the world" for secondary school students.

A new book has just been released to the market. It is a science book about light, but not just that, it is a book about experiments to play with light "Descubriendo la luz: experimentos divertidos de óptica".Juan Luís García Pomar, researcher at ICMAB, is co-author of the book.. We have interviewed him to know more about the book and the interesting optical phenomena associated, such as invisibility! If you want to know more, continue reading!

The following article appeared in the ERC Newsletter on 26 October 2018. It is about the project #LasCientíficasCuentan, which explalins complex science through the voice of fifteen female ERC grantees in Spain. From ICMAB, Teresa Puig and Marta Mas-Torrent participated in the project, funded by the FECYT and the FGCSIC. They give talks, participate in roundtables, and appear in some videos explaining their research!

The dramatised reading "Madame Châtelet and her Instagram followers" will open this STEAM day, full of science and technology activities for girls, that will take place on Saturday, 17 November, in the "Biblioteca Vapor Badia" in Sabadell. After the "Châtelet" play, which features some female scientists of our history, a bunch of workshops will be hapenning. From ICMAB, Andrés Gómez will bring the "3D printing bridges" activity.

Elies Molins, researcher at ICMAB at the Crystallography Group, was in charge of delivering the Inaugural Lecture at the "III Reunión de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Cristalografía y I Encuentro de la AChCr", in Valparaíso (Chile) on 10-12 October 2018.